Rika's Dream

Beneath a shitty one bedroom apartment in a surprisingly spacious lab one woman was hard at work. Or rather, she was eating noodles from a styrofoam cup while dozens of drone-like entities skittered around the lab working hard on her behalf. Each one was as smart as her, and she was one of the most intelligent people on the planet when it came to creating quirk-related technology. Devices and robots that could emulate the quirks of others, cybernetic enhancements that could restore lost limbs and endure natural quirks to a greater extent than their flesh and blood counterparts, she could do so very much... The problem was nobody ever wanted to pay enough to break even.

She wasn't quite operating at a loss due to the high standards of clientelle and desirability of her creations, but she wasn't making enough to fully focus on her dreams either. Her latest side project not directly involved with anyone else was a suit of powered armor, better described as a miniature mecha or robot controlled directly by a human within. It wasn't flashy and that was the point. Giant stompy mechs had been done before, but a suit that could operate at normal human speeds while maintaining the destructive ability of fantastical shows would fetch quite the pretty penny when it came time to defend against the rare Kaiju level Quirk that popped up.

The problems were many, and each one annoying. First had come the power source, then adjusting limitations just so that it could enhance the users body without tearing it apart at the same time...And they just kept coming. Its almost like the artists who designed these things hadn't even considered how they might work! Why was the human element even needed?

She let out a sigh as several of the bulky construction bots vanished at once, some tools going with them while others clattered to the ground. In her head she tackled the latest problem, alongside dozens of other voices that might have driven a less brilliant individual insane trying to translate. Each voice offering its own distinct solution using obscure scientific methods that even a master of a field might not fully understand. Just another day for Rika.

Why she spent her free time on this creation was simple, as a kid she watched all sorts of anime and cartoons about teenagers piloting robots of varying sizes to defeat evil. She had always wanted to be one of those mecha-rangers. And yet she was born with too many joints in her pinky toe to be a hero. A fact that every night made her hop up and head over to the crooked ladder up into her home proper, clamber up and put on a ratty jacket and leave into the cold night to head to a nearby bar.

Enough work, now was the time to drink. Maybe that rundown hero would join her and they could both be depressed together. She made a good drinking buddy since she never tried to offer any useless solutions to Rika's problems, just raised her glass and drank too, nomatter how esoteric and technical the cause of her misery was on a given night. It almost helped her feel normal when they hung out, Rather than being a freak without a true quirk.